A study by the Boston-based Metropolitan Area Planning Council found that 42 percent of trips taken via ride-hailing services in Boston would have been completed on public transit had the option not been available. Another 12 percent of people would have walked or biked. Plus, most people use ride-hailers end-to-end, rather than mixing the service with other modes of transport.

Executive Summary

Fifty years after the publication of the Kerner report, an updated look at the country’s landscape of inequality captures just how little has changed. “…[S]ince the late 1960s,” notes the Washington Post, “the percentage of American children living in poverty has increased, income inequality and the wealth gap have widened, and segregation has crept back into schools and neighborhoods.”

Put out as a book, the report, titled, “Healing Our Divided Society: Investing in America Fifty Years After the Kerner Report,” shows that not only have key social outcomes and measures not improved in the last 50 years, but some, like income inequality, have gotten worse.

The newly published report, writes the Post, also reflects on which programs proved the most effective against entrenched systems of inequality, noting, “that supply-side economics, including tax cuts such as those recently enacted, do not lead to trickle-down economic improvements for people at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Instead, infrastructure spending to create jobs and programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit have helped lift families out of poverty.”

Conclusion

Automated vehicles promise a lot of things but beneath the hype there’s a crucial reality: Automated vehicles can’t save cities. That’s the headline from a recent op-ed in the New York Times presented in a handy graphic slideshow. Though the new technology’s rise has people singing its potential to reduce traffic, pollution and the lack of green space, argues Allison Arieff, it’s not enough on its own to do any of that and, in fact, it could actually make those problems worse.

So how do cities make sure that doesn’t happen? By regulating the presence of autonomous vehicles sooner rather than later and by designing streets for people, not cars.

“When we understand that urban transportation is about moving people not cars our priorities for space and investment become obvious,” she concludes.